Thin-film transistor liquid crystal displays (TFT-LCDs) have dominated the field of flat-panel display technology due to the characteristics of small volume, low power consumption, non-radiation and the like and hence is widely favored by people.
In the conventional method for manufacturing an array substrate, in order to reduce the number of patterning processes, a half-tone mask process is applied to form a semiconductor active layer and source/drain electrodes in one patterning process. Therefore, the process difficulty will be increased, and hence the performance of a thin-film transistor (TFT) may become instable.
In addition, in order to optimize the performances of the array substrate and increase the flatness, at least one pattern layer with other specific function is usually arranged in the array substrate. However, in the process of forming the pattern layer with other specific function, a corresponding number of patterning processes must also be performed. Moreover, each patterning process respectively includes processes such as film forming, exposing, developing, etching and stripping.